Women In William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying

In William Faulkner’s acclaimed novel, As I Lay Dying, three very different female characters: Dewy, Cora and Addie, show us the misogynistic culture and lack of opportunities for women in this place and time. Set in the fictional town of Yoknapatawpha, Mississippi in the 1920s, the novel shows that women’s basic role in life during was to bear children. They are shamed for having any sexual desires that seem to accompany any of the mention of the female anatomy and sexuality. Traditionally, the role of a woman in Southern society was to have the children, tend the house (cook, clean, take care of children) and cater to her husband's needs. This was justified as a trade for her husband’s financial security.

Faulkner’s female character Dewey

Dell epitomizes the struggles that younger women had in this time period. Dewey becomes pregnant at seventeen years old and does not want to bear a child or become a mother. Young women of this time person are objectified and controlled by the dominant male society of the era, so when Dewey’s mother, Addie Bundren, dies, she seemingly has to face all of these events and struggles alone.
In section seven, in which the Dewey Dell’s child is conceived, we see that men solely control women, especially young women. Dewey attempts to resist the agreement she made with Lafe simply by not picking any cotton. By having her basket empty, they would not have sex. Lafe however, is determined to fulfill this agreement, and picks cotton so Dewey Dell's basket is full. When her basket is full, the agreement is fulfilled and they have sex:
I said if it don't mean for me to do it the sack will not be full and I will turn up the next row but if the sack is full, I cannot help it. It will be that I had to do it all the time and I cannot help it.
This results in Dewey Dell’s pregnancy. Though she is a young woman and enjoys sexual encounters, conceiving her pregnancy on something arbitrary such as picking cotton allows her to have less guilt on having sex. She is obviously too young to become a mother. During the 1920s in southern Mississippi, she has no means of safe contraceptives. So once pregnant, she goes on a quest to have a secret abortion.
After discovering that she is pregnant Dewy Dell feels lonely and worried. Following this event, she finds out her mother is dying. When she finds out, she lay on her bed and weeps. This reaction could have risen from shock of her mother’s death, but also of knowledge that Addie is her only female family member and she is now completely alone in the pregnancy and without any advice and guidance.
"'The Lord gave you what you have, even if He did use the devil to do it; you let Him take it away from you if it's His will to do so. You go on back to Lafe and you and him take that ten dollars and get married with it.’"
When Dewey Dell discovers she is pregnant, she does not want to keep her child, but is told explicitly that she cannot get an abortion and that having the child is her only option.
“Even if He did us the devil to do it” reflects on society's views of premarital sex. Specifically that pregnancy was the work of Satan himself.
Faulkner utilizes Dewey Dell’s powerful urge to have an abortion, and Moseley’s refusal to do as such, to show that southern women of the time were frequently contradicted to the possibility of childbearing and family life, and were also, regularly by a predominant male figure, compelled into complying with convention.

The outcomes of this appeared in the book are a show of Faulkner's assessment that ladies could never prosper in the event that they were constrained into keeping to the models that were anticipated from them.

Faulkner additionally utilizes this entry to stress the basic Christian conviction that there was no controlling your predetermination, and as a lady your fate was in all likelihood to end up distinctly a housewife. The negative effect that the consequences of this conviction had on Dewey Dell is another case of Faulkner communicating his disappointment with the traditionalist Christian convictions of the south.

Another of Faulkner’s female characters is Cora, the opposite of Dewey. Cora is the conventional, unreasonably traditionalist, subservient lady, who might have been the standard for a southern homestead ladies in the 1920s. By exhibiting Cora as shallow and unintelligent, Faulkner prompts the reader to have adverse feelings and dislike Cora.

From the beginning of the novel, Cora’s role is

clear.
“A woman’s place is with her husband and children, alive or dead. Would you expect me to want to go back to Alabama and leave you and the girls when my time comes, that I left of my own will to cast my lot with yours for better and worse, until death and after?”
Cora has a blind allegiance to her Christian religion and an undying loyalty to her social role as a kept woman and obedient house wife. As well, by her demeanor to the actions of the Bundrens, she takes a very patronizing stance amongst her neighbors.
“A woman’s place is with her husband and children, alive or dead,” says Cora,reinforcing the main idea of the book, which is loyalty to husband and family over a woman’s individual wishes and desires.
Later in the book, a third female character, Addie (mother of Dewey,) also continues this theme. Addie describes to the reader how miserable this style of life is. With these three women, Faulkner is showing us the three options for women in the time: the younger helpless woman who gets pregnant, the conservative wife and mother, and the unconventional woman who is shunned by society.
Cora is a woman who buys into the social norms of the time: the misogynistic lifestyle of motherhood, and patriarchy, and for the most part, embodies the status quo for farm-women of the south. She is a devoted Christian and is submissive to her family. Cora does not recognize her own individual worth and value, and she is conditioned to perpetuate her subservience through constant critique of others.
Yet because Faulkner makes such an unlikeable character preach about the social codes for women, he forces the reader to relate those codes to our general perception of the character preaching them. Because Cora is doltish and unintelligent, we relate the societal rules that she holds as stupid and blind. Thus, Faulkner satirizes the role of woman, and makes a feminist argument.
Faulkner uses his third female character, Addie, to challenge the traditional American social norms on the feminine role. Addie breaks social laws in many ways. For example, she is illustrated as sexually independent. She rejects the idea that one must settle for her husband and kids, and is often depicted as isolated and unsettled. It is obvious to the reader that Addie and her husband Anse do not have a loving relationship, and Addie is often described by other characters as abused by Anse.
“So I took Anse. And when I knew that I had Cash, I knew that living was terrible…”
Addie expresses her cold feelings about her marriage by being extremely matter-of-fact while recounting the details of Anse’s courting and proposal. Addie’s pregnancy deeply disturbs her, both because she feels that she has been cursed with pregnancy by her lover, and because it symbolizes her signing the rest of her life away to being a housewife.
Faulkner uses Addie’s apathetic tone and clearly pained words in this passage to illustrate the incredibly negative psychological impact that being raised in a male-dominated, female-subservient society can have on women.
“So I took Anse..”
Addie Bundren begrudgingly agrees to marry simply because it is what a woman of the time period did, not for love, but to ensure financial security. Faulkner displays his dislike of this concept by emphasizing the lack of positive emotion, and feelings of guilt that accompany Addie and Anse’s relationship.
Three altogether different female characters: Dewy, Cora and Addie, demonstrate to us the misogynistic culture and absence of opportunities for women in the 1920s, the novel demonstrates that ladies' fundamental part can be distracted and manipulated under the pressure of having children. Faulkner uses As I Lay Dying as a social commentary to speak out on kept women, safe contraceptives, and marriage.